Pettitte No Longer Wants To Pitch To I-Rod

By Chad Matejicka on August 21st, 2008 9:12 AM
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am and is filed under Baseball, Yankees Rumors & News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

In what appears to have been a quiet story but definitely an interesting one, Andy Pettitte has asked that Jose Molina become his personal catcher.

According to the New York Journal News, Pettitte asked to no longer throw to catcher Ivan Rodriquez after his miserable outing on July 31st against the Anaheim Angels.

On that night, Pettitte just never looked comfortable in going 5 1/3 innings, giving up 11 hits, and 9 earned runs.  Furthermore, Pettitte threw an uncharacteristic 48 balls and only 62 strikes in his 110 pitch outing.

This is not to take anything away from what might be the best team in baseball in the Angels, but chemistry can not be discounted in baseball.  If a pitcher does not feel comfortable throwing to a particular catcher, has to continuously shake him off, this will result in no confidence with disaster on the horizon.

Pettitte, is a pitcher who is always focused and locked in on the mound but frequently fell behind Angel batters on that night.  Consequently, Pettitte was forced into hitters counts and simply got pounded by a very good hitting team.

Vying for a playoff spot and with time running out, the last thing that the Yankees need is for one of their aces and big time pitchers to not feel uncomfortable when he takes the mound.

So for Yankee fan’s sake, lets hope they continue to use Molina for any Yankee pitcher in addition to Mike Mussina and Pettitte who request his services behind the plate.

There is currently one response to “Pettitte No Longer Wants To Pitch To I-Rod”

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  1. 1 On August 21st, 2008, Rob Abruzzese said:

    This is an interesting story, but I think this has to do with the fact that it is a stretch run in which every game is very important and Pettitte and Rodriguez have not worked together all that much. If Rodriguez had been here since spring training and had the time to learn what Pettitte expects on the mound I’m guessing there would be no issues.

    It might also be that he just really likes working with Molina as well.

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